Huckabee Compares Gay Marriage To Slavery, Quickly Backtracks

February 11, 2011 11:34 am ET by Carlos Maza

This week, potential 2012 Republican candidate Mike Huckabee went on Fox Business Network's Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano to discuss the growing divide between GOProud and social conservative groups at CPAC.

Discussing the legalization of same-sex marriage, Napolitano pressed Huckabee on the federal government's role in protecting "traditional marriage":

NAPOLITANO: But that's not an issue for the President or the federal government, that's an issue for the states, right? Massachusetts goes one way, Texas goes another.

HUCKABEE: I think when it comes to some issues, human life for example, that's like saying "slavery is okay in Mississippi but it's not okay in Massachusetts." There are some things that rise above the legislation of states.

Even considering Huckabee's previous statements about the dangers of marriage equality, his comparison between gay marriage and slavery is extremely troubling. After Napolitano asked him to clarify, Huckabee quickly backtracked:

NAPOLITANO: But you compare gay marriage to slavery?

HUCKABEE: No, no. Abortion, I was talking about abortion specifically.

NAPOLITANO: Okay.

HUCKABEE: But I would say marriage, again not homosexuality, because I know the bloggers will go nuts, I didn't say that, and I want to make absolutely clear, but I think marriage is an issue that transcends just a state's right. It does include the larger, natural law. There are two laws, the civil law and the natural law. I believe that natural law dictates that marriage is one man, one woman, life relationship.

Huckabee's nervous backtracking does nothing to change the substance of his argument-marriage equality, like slavery and abortion, goes against God's "natural law," and no state should be allowed to violate the "natural law" of God. Napolitano went on to press Huckabee on the role of religion in government:

NAPOLTIANO: Why should the state be involved?

HUCKABEE: Well I think it's an acknowledgment of the higher law that even the state operates under, Judge, which I believe is an important part of a civil society - that states not only have civil law but that they acknowledge that they themselves are subject to the higher laws of the natural law of God.

This is not the first time Huckabee has voiced his total disregard for the separation between church and state. During a 2008 campaign stop, he supported amending the U.S. Constitution to meet "God's standards":

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

And in 1998, while explaining why he left pastoring for politics, Huckabee again expressed that Jesus Christ, not the government, should be at the center of political debates:

I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.